'You'll do no such fucking thing!' hissed Glokta. 'You'll vote the way I tell you and Marovia be damned!' More prodding? Distasteful, but so be it. Are my hands not filthy to the elbow? Rummaging through another sewer or two will scarcely make the difference. He let his voice soften to an oily purr. 'I observed your daughters in the park, yesterday.' The nobleman's face lost its last vestige of colour. 'Three young innocents on the very cusp of womanhood, dressed all in the height of fashion, and each one lovelier than the last. The youngest would be… fifteen?'

'Thirteen,' croaked Ingelstad.

'Ah.' And Glokta let his lips curl back to display his toothless smile. 'She blooms early. They have never before visited Adua, am I correct?'

'They have not,' he nearly whispered.

'I thought not. Their excitement and delight as they toured the gardens of the Agriont were perfectly charming. I swear, they must have caught the eye of every eligible suitor in the capital.' He allowed his smile slowly to fade. 'It would break my heart, Lord Ingelstad, to see three such delicate creatures snatched suddenly away to one of Angland's harshest penal institutions. Places where beauty, and breeding, and a gentle disposition, attract an entirely different and far less enjoyable kind of attention.' Glokta gave a carefully orchestrated shudder of dismay as he leaned slowly forward to whisper. 'I would not wish that life on a dog. And all on account of the indiscretions of a father who had the means of reparation well within his grasp.'

'But my daughters, they were not involved—'

'We are electing a new king! Everyone is involved!' Harsh, perhaps. But harsh times demand harsh actions. Glokta struggled to his feet, hand wobbling on his cane with the effort. 'I will tell his Eminence that he can count on your vote.'

Ingelstad collapsed, suddenly and completely. Like a stabbed wineskin. His shoulders sagged, his face hung loose with horror and hopelessness. 'But the High Justice…' he whispered. 'Have you no pity?'

Glokta could only shrug. 'I did have. As a boy I was soft-hearted beyond the point of foolishness. I swear, I would cry at a fly caught in a spider's web.' He grimaced at a brutal spasm through his leg as he turned for the door. 'Constant pain has cured me of that.'

It was an intimate little gathering. But the company hardly inspires warmth. Superior Goyle glared at Glokta from across the huge, round table in the huge, round office, his beady eyes staring from his bony face. And not with tender feelings, I rather think.

The attention of his Eminence the Arch Lector, the head of his Majesty's Inquisition, was fixed elsewhere. Pinned to the curving wall, taking up perhaps half of the entire chamber, were three hundred and twenty sheets of paper. One for every great heart on our noble Open Council. They crackled gently in the breeze from the great windows. Fluttering little papers for fluttering little votes. Each one was marked with a name. Lord this, Lord that, Lord someone of wherever. Big men and little men. Men whose opinions, on the whole, no one cared a damn for until Prince Raynault fell out of his bed and into his grave.